After three years of dedicated development, Photogram announces that the Alice Camera, a novel AI-powered Micro Four Thirds camera that attaches to iOS and Android smartphones, will begin shipping to pre-order customers from 15th July 2024. Designed to streamline high-quality social media content creation for creators, businesses and everyday users, Alice Camera aims to bridge the gap between mirrorless cameras and smartphones. Users will be able to capture content with interchangeable lenses, a smartphone-like user experience and on-camera AI-driven computational photography.

Alice Camera utilises the Micro Four Thirds lens mount and a Sony 4/3″ HDR, dual-native ISO CMOS sensor. However, what sets Alice Camera apart from other mirrorless cameras is its use of a Qualcomm Snapdragon and Google Edge TPU chips as its primary processing units. These processors accelerate the calculations necessary for running Photogram’s proprietary AI-driven computational photography algorithms and software-based image signal processing (ISP) pipeline directly on the camera. Unlike hardware-based ISPs in traditional mirrorless cameras, Photogram’s AI-driven software-based ISP is an innovative approach as it enables additional AI features and improvements to be brought to their existing cameras over time. In 2023, Photogram joined Google Cloud’s program for AI startups in London, where they received credits and mentorship to further train and develop their pipeline, which automates essential functions like white balance, exposure and colour grading.

Alice Camera’s smartphone app offers an intuitive design for camera control, file management, and content sharing. Alice Camera OS, a Linux-based camera-specific operating system, allows for over-the-air software updates and open-access development, opening up new creative possibilities. Developers and businesses interested in building their own AI algorithms and custom apps on the Alice Camera platform are encouraged to contact the team.

“We’re incredibly excited to finally bring the Alice Camera to the world,” said Vishal Kumar, CEO at Photogram.
“We set out to build the Alice Camera because we wanted to offer our customers a new type of mirrorless camera built specifically for a new era of content. We’ve developed a fundamentally new engineering paradigm for mirrorless cameras, with significantly novel implementations on hardware, software and with AI algorithms. Alice Camera represents an innovative step forward in how mirrorless cameras are designed and how our users will process, capture and share their experiences. We can’t wait to see the amazing content created with the Alice Camera.”

The journey to launch was not without its challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic and global lockdowns in 2021 and 2022 caused severe chip shortages impacting Alice Camera’s manufacturing. Further delays arose in 2023 as the product underwent rigorous consumer electronics regulatory testing. Despite these hurdles, Photogram persevered, thanks to the support of its backers and investors. “We are deeply grateful for the belief and patience our community has shown throughout this journey,” added Vishal Kumar. “As a new entrant in the camera industry, we hope to bring fresh perspectives. All the difficult development work over the last three years is now done. Now, we’re ready to deliver and start to scale manufacturing. Our journey begins from today… We’re just getting started.”